Jared Harris reveals harrowing experience when his Irish movie hellraiser dad Richard saw him perform for the first time
Having taken himself off to Duke University in the US to carve out his own path away from the huge shadow of his larger-than-life father, Jared was both eager for and terrified of Richard’s response
THE first time Richard Harris saw his son Jared perform was a harrowing experience for both.
Having taken himself off to Duke University in the US to carve out his own path away from the huge shadow of his larger-than-life father, Jared was both eager for and terrified of Richard’s response.
Speaking to the Irish Sun in LA, he recalled: “My mother came to see me in a play, Equus. My father refused because he thought I was going to be crap!
“I stayed on one summer at Duke and did both a play and a movie and so eventually, he came. He was planning to tell me, ‘forget acting, go and be a director and pursue film making.’
“Anyway, the film was really embarrassing but there were some good shots in it. That evening, my father saw me in the play Entertaining Mr Sloane and I’ll never forget the first laugh I got out
of him. It was about five minutes into the play. Then afterwards, when I saw his face, he was beaming and he was so excited.
“He said, ‘I didn’t expect all this. Wow. You’ve really got it! It’s great.’
“We had something new in common that we could talk about, a new love and a passion, but I remember very clearly waiting to see what the look on his face would be like!”
Growing up as a Harris no doubt had its challenges.
Born in Limerick, Richard Harris went on to become the most famous Irish actor of his day, appearing in films such as Camelot and Gladiator as well as in This Sporting Life for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
However, like his contemporary and close pal Peter O’Toole, he was also well known for his off-screen antics and the pair carved out a reputation as Hollywood hellraisers.
He claimed to have quit drinking for 13 years and drank only Guinness in his later life, describing it as “the best Irish food”.
A charismatic leading man, he was also a hit with the ladies. He married first wife Elizabeth Rees-Williams in 1957, and the pair had three children, all of whom followed him into the industry.
Jared is the eldest, middle son Jamie is also an actor while the youngest Damien is a director.
When Richard and Elizabeth split, she went on to marry My Fair Lady actor Rex Harrison, while Richard later wed American actress Ann Turkel before divorcing her in 1982.
Considering their parents’ tumultuous love lives, it was perhaps no surprise that the Harris children were all sent off to boarding school.
They found some measure of stability at Lady Cross school in East Sussex on the southern English coast, where Jared first developed a love of film.
It certainly wasn’t the easiest of surroundings. Harris recalled: “Of course no one was ever known by or even called by their first name. Quite often you were known as Harris 108 or just 108.
“Because there were three of us Harris’s in the school, my eldest brother Damian was called Harris May, I was Harris Me and my youngest brother Jamie was Harris Minimus!
“It was a very male-centric school with a strict hierarchy and if one of the teachers didn’t like you, it could be hell. The movies they showed us were things like Colditz or The Trojan Horse and we would cast ourselves in these films.”
The trio fared well in school, but never quite realized that their parents were to blame for sending them away from home.
Jared joked: “We thought we had been put in the school accidentally and that we had to plan our escape and that they would be delighted to see us! We didn’t really understand that they were the ones who sent us there in the first place!”
Dad Richard always danced to his own tune and would never come and visit his sons on the open visiting weekends.
Working to his own timetable, he regularly caused havoc for his children. Jared said: “He picked his own weekends to show up. You’d be sitting in class and someone would go, ‘Harris, why is your father outside the window?’
“He’d basically be walking up and down the corridor and he’d say to the headmaster, ‘I’m taking my children out. I’m paying enough for this.’ Then he’d say, ‘what kind of facilities do you have for my children? Are they good enough?’ Of course that was a game.
“They’d say things like, ‘our projector isn’t working’ or ‘we need a new stage’. He’d say, ‘fine, I’ll get one for you and now I’m taking my children out.’
“Everyone knew the relationship pretty well. Dad was a rule breaker and he was never going to show up on the right day, whereas my mother was totally loyal and reliable.” Jared, who is married to TV host Allegra Riggio, has clearly inherited his dad’s talent for acting.
He has worked consistently in front of and behind the screen since the mid- 1980s, often playing violent or criminal characters.
Wildmen of bygone era
By Aoife Finneran
IN his heyday, Richard Harris hit the headlines for the type of drunken antics that would make a noughties-era Colin Farrell look like an altar boy.
Together with fellow Irishman Peter O’Toole, pictured left, Welsh icon Richard Burton and the legendary Oliver Reed, pictured right, he led a golden era of Hollywood hellraising throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Harris moved to London in his late teens where his sessions invariably ended up at the local police station in Kensington.
Popping out to buy a paper one evening, he failed to return for two weeks after encountering a drinking pal.
Meanwhile O’Toole once tried to buy a pub in order to avoid being kicked out at closing time.
When the two Irishmen were cast in a play at Bristol’s Old Vic, they missed their cue after heading to a bar across the road during the interval.
Harris eventually made it to the stage but tripped and crashed into the lap of three elderly audience members.
One of the women disgustedly said, “Good God, Harris is drunk”, to which he replied, “Madam, if you think I’m drunk, wait until you see O’Toole.”
Their pal Burton once drank 21 shots of tequila on a film set before diving into the sea to find a shark. He generally swigged a dozen beers before hitting “the hard stuff” at lunchtime.
Meanwhile Reed, who made his name as the baddie Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist, vomited on his actor pal Steve McQueen during one session.
And he infamously left the set of the Channel 4 programme After Dark after arriving drunk and attempting to seduce feminist writer Kate Millett, mumbling: “Give us a kiss, big tits.”
More recently, he has starred in hit TV shows such as Fringe, Mad Men, The Crown and The Terror.
Although he is an actor of considerable range, he often has the embarrassing experience of being confused for a real-life hardman, particularly going through airports.
He said: “I do enjoy anonymity but for a while going through immigration, they would look extra-hard at me and say, ‘I know that guy.’
"Because I was playing a lot of bad guys at the time, so the association was not good usually.”
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You might think the younger Harris could trade off his famous name, but he admitted that it has often been more of a hindrance than a help.
He said: “There was a real guy named Jared Thomas Harris who was armed and dangerous and wanted in 25 states in the US. He was a bank robber. I’m Jared Francis Joseph Harris, but I would get stopped every time.
“Finally, a nice immigration officer explained why I was getting stopped all the time.”